8/1/10

Tallinn, Estonia

The train station next to our hotel.

From the map that I was holding and which I've studied over and over, our hotel in Tallinn look like it was an effortless walk from the ferry terminal. All we needed to do was make sure we were on a street called Toompuiestee. So we crossed the first stop light right after the terminal, sought the name of the first street on the map (which we couldn't determine since there were no street signs!) and tried asking the first local we could find who only shrugged and said "something . . . something" in Estonian.

A hotel building that harks back to the Soviet days.

The hallway carpeting says we're right next door to the trains.

The next woman only looked at us blankly. Oops, did I mispronounce anything? We walked and walked some more. We crossed some more streets with no street signs and merely followed the tracks of the tram which was on its way close to the main rail station where our hotel, the Go Hotel Shnelli, was located next to. We didn't want to use the tram as we had no Estonian Kroon and there's no way we could have bought any tram ticket using the Euro. Estonia has been part of the Europian Union (EU) since 2004 but their Kroon won't be replaced by the Euro until at least next year.

The naturally-heated room, in summer.

Hotel breakfast room.

On our third try, we finally found a statuesque young Estonian woman who looked at our map and declared we're close to the street we've been looking for. We crossed the tracks and a few minutes later found ourselves gazing at a tall building, more like a Soviet bloc housing, with the name of the hotel on top of it. Already sweating from the afternoon heat, we gladly went into reception for check-in and was given card keys. At $40 for a twin room with buffet breakfast included, this was really a bargain. However, as we found out, there's no airconditioning - not even an electric fan. My armpits were crying out loud.

The room had this huge glass window facing the railway platforms which would only open a bit to allow for enough ventilation. It appears that Estonia is such a cold country during winter and their summers are so short that they find no use for airconditioners at all. Since summers have incredibly long daylight here, we decided to go out to feel the general layout of our surroundings and also have an early dinner while we're at it. Our hotel is just outside the walls of the Old Town, Tallinn's postcard-pretty medieval part of town.

Dinner: Estonian sausages with mashed potato & onion marmalade.

Dessert: Crème brûlée.

At the Raekoja Plats (Old Town Square) where we had dinner.

We crossed the pretty park in front of the hotel and into Old Town where we immediately felt enamored by what we initially saw. We were merely dipping our toes so to speak, reserving our energies for sight-seeing the next day, but it felt too good not to snap them to digital memories right away. Hunger of course took its course and we took to the labyrinthine cobbled streets with more ease as we searched for dinner since streets here ironically have signs. This is tourist town, not just Old Town, after all. For tonight however, we're gonna have to sleep in medieval (dis) comfort . . . without airconditioning.

First time seeing Estonia too. It seems like a very clean and nice place. The buildings on the last photo are very cute. $40 for a room includes the buffet with no air condition-Hope you had a good sleep in there! I thought the carpet with train track design is very funny as well. :)

hi nomad , im going to estonia in feb i was due to go to kalliningrad but too much hassle with visas , anyway mate can you tell me more bout the place , such as , expensive or cheap like drink n food .. i appreciate any feed back . cheers m8